The Book of Acts does not mention the journey to Arabia and does not make clear where it may be inserted. Sometimes it is placed in the middle of Acts ix. 19, before the words, "And he was with the disciples in Damascus some days." In that case the discussion about the word "immediately" in Gal. i. 16 would be unnecessary; that word could be taken strictly with the positive part of the sentence without contradicting the Book of Acts; the journey to Arabia would have preceded the preaching activity in Damascus. Or the journey may be placed before Acts ix. 22; it would then be the cause of the greater vigor of Paul's preaching. Finally, it may be placed simply within the "many days" of Acts ix. 23. The phrase, "many days," in Acts apparently is used to indicate fairly long periods of time. It must be remembered that the author of Acts is not concerned here about chronology; perhaps he did not trouble himself to investigate the exact period of time that elapsed before the journey to Jerusalem. He was content merely to record the fact that before Paul went to Jerusalem he engaged for a considerable time in preaching in the Damascus synagogues. Certainly he must here be acquitted of any attempt at subserving the interests of harmony in the Church by a falsification of history. It is generally recognized now, against the Tübingen contentions, that if the author of Acts contradicts Galatians, his contradiction is naïve rather than deliberate; the contradiction or apparent contradiction at least shows the complete independence of his account. He is not deliberately shortening up the time before Paul's first conference with Peter in the interests of a compromise between a Pauline and a Petrine party in the Church; if he had had the "three years" of Paul before him as he wrote he would have had no objection to using the detail in his history. But investigation of the chronology did not here seem to be important. The detail of the three years was vastly important for Paul's argument in Galatians, where he is showing that for a considerable period after the conversion he did not even meet those from whom he was said to have received his gospel, but it was not at all important in a general history of the progress of the Church.